The American electrical engineer Vannevar Bush and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented the first continuous integraph, later called a differential analyzer, during the early 1930s. Its integrators consisted of replaceable shafts, gears, wheels, and disks and required much manual setting up. The analog computer operates electronically and faster (although not always as accurately) and accomplishes the same operations with components that take up less space. The inherent lack of precision has been rectified in some cases by use of digital counting devices, giving rise to a subclass of these machines known as digital differential analyzers.

in mathematics, technique of finding a function g (x) the derivative of which, Dg (x), is equal to a given function f (x). This is indicated by the integral sign “∫,” as in ∫ f (x), usually called the indefinite integral of the function. The symbol dx represents an...

March 11, 1890 Everett, Mass., U.S. June 28, 1974 Belmont, Mass. American electrical engineer and administrator who developed the Differential Analyzer and oversaw government mobilization of scientific research during World War II.